I hope we can return to the social democracy of before the 1980s soon in the West. Austerity politics hurt everybody except the ultra-wealthy.
Is my advice too mercenary?
101–110 of 390 posts
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#102I’m not inclined to do an exit interview because I’ve likely already expressed my opinions. I do think the “the company doesn’t care about you” type advice does require some nuance. Different companies make different choices and just because someone moves from mega corporation to mega corp doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust anyone… There’s space in between giving your entire self to a company and imagining everyone is…
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Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#103I’m not inclined to do an exit interview because I’ve likely already expressed my opinions. I do think the “the company doesn’t care about you” type advice does require some nuance. Different companies make different choices and just because someone moves from mega corporation to mega corp doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust anyone… There’s space in between giving your entire self to a company and imagining everyone is…
One of the reasons I left a BigCo is the pervasive cynicism. I really had trouble finding it satisfying to work in an environment where cynicism was so deep and widespread but nobody wanted to leave because of the advantages (like good pay and good tooling). It just felt stifling after awhile.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#104Actually, fuck you, got mine _is_ my attitude. It just turns out that getting mine involves helping others
This is the point most people miss. People operate by incentives, mostly internal ones. You go where you derive the most value. He also lost me at `late-stage Capitalist` as if that were a real thing.
You might have misunderstood me. I really meant that my incentives (which are 98% monetary) are well aligned with helping my peers. If they do well, we all elevate each other (I'm monetarily motivated to elevate my peers, through aligned incentives at work through good management and tending to my network)
FWIW I'm intentional & clear to my peers about priorities.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
The ACA ossified the existing system a bit, but employer-provided care was the norm before the ACA. That or just not having any insurance, especially for young people working for small companies.
ACA did not ossify it. If anything, ACA allowed non employers to purchase insurance. Previously, the options were to work for a deep pocketed employer or just not have insurance.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#106One of the wisest pieces of career advice I ever heard was "you cannot change an organization by leaving it." It works both ways: if you're leaving in hopes that it'll be a wake-up call to management that a valuable person left, then it probably won't be. And, if you leave your workplace to improve your own life, you've also necessarily chosen not to try and improve the workplace. Leaving means giving up on trying to…
I once left a company and half the staff followed, they closed their doors 2 months later.
Apparently all the staff that actually knew how to layout the magazine, run the online content, and print the publications were important. A sales staff with no ad-space to sell can't do much.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#107One of the wisest pieces of career advice I ever heard was "you cannot change an organization by leaving it." It works both ways: if you're leaving in hopes that it'll be a wake-up call to management that a valuable person left, then it probably won't be. And, if you leave your workplace to improve your own life, you've also necessarily chosen not to try and improve the workplace. Leaving means giving up on trying to…
Why would you even want to change an organization?
I've changed the place I work immensely in my three years here, and I think for the better. But at no point did I (or would I) threaten to leave if they didn't change... It just wouldn't work.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#108One of the wisest pieces of career advice I ever heard was "you cannot change an organization by leaving it." It works both ways: if you're leaving in hopes that it'll be a wake-up call to management that a valuable person left, then it probably won't be. And, if you leave your workplace to improve your own life, you've also necessarily chosen not to try and improve the workplace. Leaving means giving up on trying to…
I once left a company and half the staff followed, they closed their doors 2 months later. Apparently all the staff that actually knew how to layout the magazine, run the online content, and print the publications were important. A sales staff with no ad-space to sell can't do much.
...Okay, yes, technically sometimes by leaving you can change an organization from "alive" to "dead." :) But that's probably not the change that would have kept you around, right?
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#109I’m not inclined to do an exit interview because I’ve likely already expressed my opinions. I do think the “the company doesn’t care about you” type advice does require some nuance. Different companies make different choices and just because someone moves from mega corporation to mega corp doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trust anyone… There’s space in between giving your entire self to a company and imagining everyone is…
My experiences while at Cisco about 4-5 years ago:
1st experience: Told my boss I am leaving. My boss’s boss calls me in a room , tells me he has some great projects for me and that we will work together on them. I agree. Turns out it was his last day!
2nd experience: Similar situation, told my boss I am going to a startup. Boss’s boss calls me and gives me a lecture about how it is a bad idea to go to a startup. I leave. A few weeks later I find out he also left for a startup.
Some time later I met the boss from the 1st experience and he told me “sorry, but it was not personal. I was just doing my job”
If you are in a megacorp your job should be to extract as much money as possible while doing as little work as possible. Because your boss's job is exactly the opposite.
Your coworkers are not out to get you but your managers are. Don’t fucking ever trust them.
Re: Is my advice too mercenary?
#110At the end of his book AMP it up, Frank Slootman provides some career tips. The things he focuses on. 1. Join a company that's growing and moving up. He talks about getting in the elevator by joining the right company. And how everyone during certain years at Microsoft did well (just one example). 2. Next he recommends ignoring compensation in the early days of your career. I see this at my company sometimes. Mid lev…
If it's early in your career ( After that I think you have a point. I work at a FAANG as a SWE (15 YOE) and want to move into management, but it requires a SWE promotion first to staff engineer I don't think I'm capable of getting at this company. (I've been a staff engineer at a previous firm though). I could switch to a lower tier company and definitely find a way to move into management and develop my career on th…
For much of the past century, the best career advice in the world was: go to IBM, General Motors, General Electric. Climb the ladder for a few decades, get a pension, retire at the top 1% of the income pyramid. That worked great until it didn't, and millions of people got left with no savings or useful job skills.
Today's world offers so many more paths for talented builders, beyond joining the currently hot company as a cog in the giant ad-tech machine and hoping for the best. As a data point, go read last week's article on how Sidekiq has made $13 million for a solo developer.